$42,000 For a 3-Letter .DE! Stunning Sale at Sedo Stands at
the Summit On Our New Top Ten

by Ron Jackson Archived
12-16-03

After an uncustomary absence from last week's Domain Name
Journal Top Ten chart, Germany's popular country code, .DE,
is back with a vengeance this week! I have been around long enough
to not be surprised by most of what I see, but I have to admit my
eyes are still bugging out after getting Sedo's
weekly sales report and seeing GSG.DE sitting at the top with
a spectacular $42,784 price tag next to it!

We're accustomed to 3-letter .coms reaching the stratosphere but it
is rare for even one of those to scale heights like this these days.
.DE also took the #8 slot on this week's chart with Oestereich.de
("Austria" in German) going for $6,100, also at Sedo, a
venue that enjoyed a banner week. The auction site pulled in $20,000
for the second highest seller, Licon.com. We don't know
who the buyer is yet, but two possible candidates are the Licon
company that makes electrical switches or actor Jeffrey Licon.
Sedo also handled a fourth 5-digit sale with Councellors.com
going for $10,000. Afternic's
top entry was Gesture.com at $8,500, good for the #5
slot.

.INFO and .ORG made repeat appearances after charting last
week. Sedo scored another touchdown with Sport.info
attracting $7,500 to land in the 6th position on the big
board as well as first on our New TLD chart. Meanwhile MediaNews.org
sold for $3,633 at Pool.com
to nail down the final slot on the Top Ten.

As always, keep in mind that these are the highest value sales
that have been reported in the past week. This column is
meant to be an educational tool, not a complete list
documenting ALL high value domain sales. Such a list is
impossible to produce because many sales are kept private at the
insistence of buyers, sellers or both. With that disclaimer out
of the way, here's the complete Top Ten list:

South American buyer Christian Chena was again responsible
for one of the Top Ten sales this week. He is the one who parted
with $15,000 to add VCD.com to his portfolio (he made
a Top Ten buy last week when he paid $6,600 for eMule.org). Looks
like money well spent as video CD's are a wildly popular
entertainment format in China and the domain already gets steady
traffic. Chena hooked up with the seller through the popular domain
name forum DNForum.com.

One of the biggest stories this week is a sale that apparently
has still NOT taken place. Last
week we told you about someone bidding $61,005 for eDeals.com
at Pool. It was not listed on our charts then because payment
has not been made. Looks like Pool is still waiting
for their money. The WhoIs record still has the domain
registered to Rebel.com, the registrar that caught the name
for Pool (the domain also does not resolve).

No need to dwell on that though because there were plenty of
other domains that DID sell! The highest valued .net of the
week was VHS.net which went for $2,700 at Pool (looks
like there is still some life in those old videotapes!). Pool also
collected $2,600 for CustomSuits.com and $2,396
for PrintingEquipment.com. Afternic logged a $2,500
sale for IrrationalExuberance.com (must be a BIG Alan
Greenspan fan!). Sedo celebrated the holidays by moving Weihnachten.net
("Christmas" in German) for €1,350 ($1,655) and
also received €1,000 ($1,222) for Villen.org.

Pool landed and sold a truckload of 3-letter .nets this
past week. Here is a sampling of those that all fetched over
$1,000 each (the exact range for this group was $1,012 to
$1,662): LRE, VAH, LIR, LMP, LFO, FEI, LMH, LNB, NFB, DRI,
RNO, CRD & TTR. Makes me feel like a bit of dunce for
letting one of similar quality go for about a quarter of that
recently!

Now let's turn our attention to the New TLD Chart (which tracks .info, .biz and .us).
It is becoming apparent that .info has separated itself form
the rest of the new extension pack. Almost every week now we have a
four figure .info sale reported, and more often than not, the .infos
sweep every position on our chart. This week was no different. With
Sport.info leading the way, there were a trio of four-digit .info
sales:

IQ-Test.info kind of brings into question the theory that
combining two potential negatives (a hyphen AND a new TLD) is fatal
to domain value. Obviously this kind of combination will not be a
day-in and day-out hot seller, but with the right keywords and a
good match with the extension, this shows it can pay off (if only
once in a blue moon).

Our fifth slot was vacant again this week as no other finalized
sales were reported. I would have had that spot myself with ChicagoHomes.info
which sold at Afternic for $395 last week, but we haven't
completed the escrow process on that one yet. Perhaps my
name will be in lights next week.

I can report one finalized sale I had at Afternic last week. Not
a new TLD, but certainly an alternative choice, .WS (The Samoan
country code that GoDaddy and others market to mean "web
site"). The domain in question was Bodybuilding.ws which
went $340. I don't have to make a sales pitch since the
domain has already been sold, but that is a terrific keyword with
huge marketing potential (enough to overcome the seldom used
extension).

I would like to extend a special "Thank You" to Richard
Meyer of the American Marketing Corporation in Woodbine,
Maryland for his help in gathering data for this week's list. As always, we welcome all verifiable sales reports from companies,
private sellers or individuals with knowledge of an important sale
made through any channel. To contribute information and help make
this column better, just drop a note to editor@dnjournal.com.

Every Tuesday we publish the highest reported domain name
sales for the previous week. On Monday our contributors send us
their sales data for the previous 7 days. We then compile that
information and write this report for Tuesday publication to give
you the freshest sales report in the industry.

We will close with this standard caution. These are notaverage selling
prices - these are top selling domains. One of the
biggest impediments to making sales is pricing domains at
unrealistic levels. For most of us, pricing domains at the levels
achieved on the Top Ten chart will leave us waiting a long time to make a sale! We hope you will
use the information presented here as a measuring stick that will
help you price your domains at levels that will put more money in
your pocket more often!

Editor's Note: If you wish to review previous Domain
Sales columns, they are available in our Archive.